


Snowballs, Snow Falls

by sxetia



Category: Chainsaw Man (Manga)
Genre: Afterlife, Afterlife reunion, Canonical Character Death, Dying thoughts, F/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26202361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxetia/pseuds/sxetia
Relationships: Hayakawa Aki/Himeno
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	Snowballs, Snow Falls

Blood – so much blood, more than the Gun Fiend had ever knew and yet not even a single drop in the sea that he had spilled.

Consciousness split between killing machine and fragile young boy, the creep of warm crimson staining his white button-up, the frigid cold of snowballs pelting against his bright red parka, screaming and crying and the most beautiful, serene silence...

And fingers through his hair, thumbs carefully grazing across the distended jut of the gun barrel that staved open his forehead. They brushed his fringe out of his face, or what remained of it, and exposed his tear-soaked eyes to the light.

She smiled the most pitiful smile, and tilted her head just to one side. Petting, doting, staring down at him with the saddest eyes the Gun Fiend had ever seen. Eyes – two of them, exhausted to their very core and yet filled with a vibrant, lively spirit. Shattered fragments of an old bedside conversation suddenly cracked to the front of his consciousness: "Hell is real," she posited, "so that must mean there's something better than all of this, too."

"Oh, Aki," she cursed, voice as raspy and hoarse and perfect as it ever was. She let fingertips splay across his jaw and tuck underneath his ears, thumbs toying with the piercings that she had always loved so much. "What have you gotten yourself into...?"

He wanted to speak, but no words came. The little boy that stood in his mind's eye stared at him, blinked, and waved goodbye. "Sorry, but I gotta go," he called out, pointing lackadaisically at the two blonde children in the distance. "My family's waiting for me!"

He moved his arms up to carefully touch her forearms and found only ten fingers there, no guns, no severed limbs. He slowly snaked fingers around her wrists and let his thumbs curl across her palms, and managed to smile.

"I kept my promise," Aki said. Himeno smiled. "I knew you would."

"You've got a lot of explaining to do, mister," she said as he forced himself to sit up, and he shrugged his shoulders. "So do you. We'll catch up, right...?"

"Yeah. All the time in the world, now."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," he said as he broke his stare and looked off into the infinite, brilliant white. "Now my days aren't numbered."

Snow fell all around them, and for the first time Aki knew silence, peace and quiet, the ringing in his ears following the Gun Devil's shot heard 'round the world having finally ceased.


End file.
